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The other day, I was casually watching a Minecraft stream when suddenly, Steam decides it might be a good idea to update some of my games. Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if I had a better Internet connection, but this isn’t the case…

Obviously, the Steam updates took up ALL of my bandwidth, making the stream impossible to watch. This pissed my off to no end, so I decided to scour the web for a way to limit a program’s internet bandwidth.

Turns out, it’s actually a fairly easy thing to do. The first thing you need to do is to download and install a program called NetBalancer (the free version is more than enough for our needs). NetBalancer can be found here: https://netbalancer.com/

Once NetBalancer is finished installing, open it. You’ll see something like this:

Now, let’s say we want to limit the download speed of Google Chrome. We first need to select the relevant process (in this case, chrome.exe):

Now, we need to click on the half-filled green arrow icon:

We then set the desired download limit and press Ok.

And there you go, the program should now have a limited download speed, and therefore won’t monopolize your internet connection.

Okay, so you’ve just bought a computer for your child’s bedroom, which is on the last floor, and your router is in the basement. Now, you also purchased a wireless USB adapter so that your child could have access to the internet. The only problem is: the connection isn’t strong enough, being two floors below, and it’s impossible to browse the internet when you’re on the uppermost floor!

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to solve this problem. Let’s say you have a computer on the first floor. This PC is close enough to the router to have a good signal, but it is also closer to the top floor. What we can do is share this computer’s internet connection so that your child can also navigate the web!

Basically, what we will be doing in this article is a thing called “Internet Connection Sharing”. What it implies is that a computer with internet access will allow other web-compatible devices to connect to the internet via that computer. In other words, you’re setting up an internet hotspot on your PC. This means that you can effectively extend the range of your wireless network by relaying it though your computer.

What we will need

Setting up our internet access

Now, you need to install Virtual Wifi Router (beware, there are a lot of potentially unwanted programs that come with the installation, I recommend you skip them ;))

Once the install is finished, start the program. If you encounter this error:

Running Virtual WiFi Router as administrator should fix it.

Ok, once we’ve opened Virtual WiFi Router, we need to configure our network.

Choose a meaningful name for your network, such as “My-Extended-Network”, and a password. Next, select which internet connection you want to share from, and how many users can be connected at any said time. Once you’re ready. click START. You should now be able to connect to your network!

That’s it! I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and that you found it helpful!
-Icosebyte